As terminal devices develop to be more and more intelligent, there are more and more applications (APPs), and people can enjoy the convenience due to the intelligence of the terminal devices. When a user uses the terminal device, he/she may be used to keeping several frequently used applications in a background running state. The frequently used applications include twitter, WeChat, QQ, etc. An application in a background running state on the terminal device may be called as background application. If the number of background applications is small, the occupied memory resource of the terminal device is small. If the number of background applications is large, the occupied memory resource in the terminal device is large, such that the processing speed of the terminal device is affected. Thus, it is important to know how to control background applications in the terminal device.
In a related art, a method for controlling a background application is as follows. A maximum threshold is provided, and it is monitored by the terminal device whether the number of background applications is greater than the maximum threshold. If the number of background applications is less than or equal to the maximum threshold, each of the background applications is allowed to be in a background running state. If the number of background applications is greater than the maximum threshold, a background application occupying the biggest memory space may be closed. For example, assuming the maximum threshold is 25, if the number of background applications is 24, each of the background applications is allowed to be in the background running state. If the number of background applications is 26, the background application occupying the biggest memory space may be closed so as to release the memory space.
In the above described method, it is determined whether a background application is closed by determining whether the number of background applications is greater than the maximum threshold. If the number of background applications is greater than the maximum threshold, the background application occupying the biggest memory space may be closed. While the user may wish to keep the background application occupying the biggest memory space in a background running state all the time, the closing of the background application may affect the user experience. Thus, with the above described method, the background application in the terminal device cannot be well controlled, thereby affecting the user experience.